In my book, Strategic Management- Building Competitive Advantage describes how Selex Galileo developed a competency framework to train new generation of quality professionals.
Selex Galileo employs 7,200 personnel with operations within the US, UK and Italy. The company develops integrated capability solutions which deliver enhanced situational awareness , security, and safety across land, sea, and air. It develops a complete range of solutions from surveillance, tracking, and targeting equipment to protection and navigation control systems for military and government missions. Selex Galileo systems provide the capability to achieve mission success and quality has a key role to play in those systems.
As part of an initiative to position quality as a key business contribution and to develop a higher profile for quality assurance as a career of choice for graduates, particularly those looking for a career in aerospace, Selex Galileo decided to develop a scheme for quality assurance competence development. Entitled Quality Developing You, the starting point was to define what quality means within the business.
Quality within Selex Galileo
Quality at Selex Galileo is defined as a combination of the business management system, internal audit and assurance.
Business Management System
Selex Galileo maintains an effective business management system which provide a definition of management intent and acts as a knowledge management system, capturing best practice and references to other resources, so activities can be undertaken in a consistent manner. The BMS constitutes the company's set of standard operating processes and ensures compliance with mandatory external certification requirements such as ISO 9001, AS 9100, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001. The BMS must ensure that policies and processes are totally aligned with management intent for the scope of work undertaken and, where necessary , how this work is to be carried out.
Internal Audit
Internal Audit is an evaluation process aimed at assessing the level of conformity of the company of the company, with respect to defined requirements or standards and/or processes. The evaluation is based on systematic methods and an objective findings approach.
The internal audit approach addresses the following aspects:
1. BMS audits: utilising resource from the process owner to support the effective undertaking of the audit, to verify deployment of management intent as defined within the BMS documentation.
2. Project surviellance sudits: targeted at identified and agreed risk areas, to verify compliance with project management plans and assesses both process and product.
Both types of internal audit are aimed at assuring compliance with management intent and the identification and implementation of corrective action and improvemnt activities.
Assurance
The head of quality of each Selex Galileo site deploys a number of product assurance managers in support of the project teams and lines of business. Each PAM operates as part of an integrated project team or teams. The PAM is responsible for establishing the assurance estimate , the association assurance plan (quality plan) and for managing the assurance activities established, in accordance with the particular needs of the programme.
Each programme considers the requirements for the "Seven Domains of Assurance" to support the Integrated Project Team. They are:
1. Product Assurance Management
2. Systems Assurance
3. Softare Assurance
4. Hardware Assurance
5. Supply Chain Assurance
6. Operations
7. In-service support Assurance
Assurance is focued on identifying product issues such as defects, non conformances, risks, and failures as early as possible in the product life cycle. IPTs will therefore be informed about status, non conformances and agreed corrective actions managed to closure, involving appropriate level of management through established escalation mechanisms such as weekly IPT meetings, monthly business project reviews or through effective monthly reporting ith defined items for escalation.
Defined processes have been created for each of the domains explaining how they are undertaken. For example, software assurance is approved by the head of softare.
During the initial bid phase of a project , the product assurance manager works in partnership with the project team to establish which areas of assurance (independent consideration and review) will mitigate risk. This is based on a consideration of the customer's requirements, the project's key output / deliverables, its key suppliers and the key processes in each of the domains.
It as very evident that having defined quality and how the assurance activity should be undertaken , success in these areas is totally dependent on the capability of our people to deploy it effectively. This led us to embark on the career map and competency work for QDY.
Quality Developing You
Before embarking on a definition of QDY competencies, two important documents were developed in order to put in place the business governance and framework requirements for the quality function. These are the framework for the management of quality within the company- a top level policy documents and quality career map. (see the example of quality career map in my book Strategic Management). Galileo needed to define competency. It as decided that competency is a combination of:
- Knowledge - an understanding of the activity
- Skill - the ability to undertake an activity
- Behavior- how we go about things and conduct ourselves
- Experience- how long someone has been undertaking an activity
Competency Development
Next we undertook research and brainstorming exercises to determine the competency requirements for the Seven Domains of Assurance , BMS and audit. This research included reference to the CQI Body of Knowledge , AS 9100C- a standard for quality management system in aviation, space and defense- and the International Aerospace Quality Group Guidance Material PCAAP 001- a standard for competence management within the aerospace sector. This was the most difficult and complex part of the project , as we needed to create a simple but effective competency set from a huge amount of supporting information.
Having defined the competencies using the four categories of knowledge, skill, behavior and experience , the next challenge was to develop these into two further categories:
- Generic- competencies that apply to all quality related activities i.e ISO 9001.
- Specific- competencies that apply specifically to an aspect of quality and this is predominantly relevant to Seven Domains of Assurance, ie software assurance and Fagan inspection.
Competency levels
Having developed a career map and a set of competencies , we needed to establish what level as required for each career map position against the competencies. The level of competency required would obviously increase with ptogression to higher positions on the career map. (Illustration is on page 156 of my book Strategic Management)
Putting It all together
The next step in the QDY development as to get all the factor considered. so people within the organization and what their training and development needs are with regards career progression. Factors to consider are:
- Career map positions
- Genetic competency requirements
- Specific competency requirements
- Skill, Knoledge, behavior and experience per competency per career map position
Having completed the documentation of the competencies against career map positions including the required levels, this was approved for publication on the BMS. The different requirements were built into a company database/analysis tool (SKATE) which enabled the following processes to be easily undertaken electronically:
- Individual's current career map position loaded into SKATE with all the associated skills, knowledge , behavior and experience requirements and levels being automatically populated against their profile.
- Individuals can self -assess against all requirements for their job role
- Line Managers can review self-assessments and approve overall competency profiles.
- Individuals "gap" against job role requirements can be reviewed
- Individuals can undertake "what if" gap analysis against other roles within the business , not just quality
- Individual's learning and development program can be agreed
What Next?
As as the competencies that have been defined are used as part of the company personal development review process to support engineers' career development , these will undoubtedly continue to develop to support the quality approach that we need to build into our business. It will be important to keep the competency set up to date and fresh. In particular, this will address the Seven Domains of Assurance specific competencies.
The next major challenge for the project will be working out how to address the "gaps" identified through company assessments and PDRs. Our future focus will be on learning and development asset as we aim to develop the quality professionals we require to contribute effectively and make a real difference within our business.Work is underway with the CQI in order to get the competency set and subsequent approved review documents designated as valid entry criteria for CQI membership. They have been endoresed by two CQI Fellows (which JOP is a member) and will hopefully be accredited and approved shortly . This will enable us to encourage membership of the CQI as part of our personal development review process with minimal additional efforts.
The CQI has a huge part to play in defining and implementing the remit of the quality professional within industry. A key contribution that the CQI can make will be to help create and provide learning and development support such as courses, opportunities within other businesses, presentation material and a refresh of the Body of Quality Knowledge.This will also mean the CQI engaging to meet, support and lead quality within today's industry , covering the complete range from schoolchildren thinking about a career in aerospace, defense and security industry to seasoned professionals of many years' standing.
The Article is my 4th Research work for the year 2010 and is included in one of my book "Strategic Management-Building Competitive Advantage"..
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento